HISTORY OF THE ALPS, 1500 - 1900: ENVIRONMENT, DEVELOPMENT, AND SOCIETY

Preface

1 Preface This book examines the history of the Alps from the end of the Middle Ages until 1900 and is guided by two questions: What was the nature of the relationships between demographic growth, economic development, and Alpine environment? And in what manner did political factors affect agrarian structure and society? The first question is essentially economic, and provides the theme of chapters two through five. The second one is sociopolitical, and is taken up in chapters six through eight. In both sections our methodological point of departure is the premise that the history of the Alpine space is best understood if it is examined in the context of the low-lying areas that surround it. In closing, the results and arguments will be summarized in an overview. But before beginning, it would be helpful to explain why historians became interested in a territory that is defined above all in geographic terms: the Alps, a historical space? “Perhaps the last secret of the impression created by the high Alps is a sense of distance from life,” wrote, just about a hundred years ago, Georg Simmel, as he described the feelings generated by the mountains’ mass, form, and human absence. The German philosopher and sociologist was known for his observational and interpretive abilities. Like many other intellectuals of the period who loved to travel, he had experienced the mountains personally. Last secrets seem to me to be too secret. But the distance Preface 2 mentioned by Simmel and, even more so, the public emphasis on this distance are both reasons for my persistent restless interest in Alpine matters. This began with the history of a valley during the Old Regime, a project that weighed on me for a long time, as page after page was filled with text. Later there followed a history of agriculture during the early modern period, in a larger Alpine region. Now I have in front of me this book that stretches from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries and deals with the entire Alpine arc. This kind of journey through time and space might at first seem linear, if not unimaginative. A closer look, though, shows that it is only partly a story in installments. Many of the themes that I examined in my previous studies do not play any role in this one. Rather, attention is focused here on issues that had been either only briefly mentioned or totally ignored in my earlier work. On the whole, the move from a single Alpine valley to the entire Alpine space, or from microhistory to macrohistory, has narrowed down the problem set. Readers will not find here a broad description of daily life in the Alps between 1500 and 1900, but a study concentrating on specific topics, chosen because of their general significance , and thus also because of their theoretical interest. The conception of the book made it advisable to focus on economic and sociopolitical processes and to address cultural elements only sporadically. As a historian who is convinced that it is fruitful to alternate approaches, I believe that it would be misleading to represent this decision, here, as a question of principle. On the other hand, for objective reasons, some of the themes that are at the forefront of the literature play a secondary role in this account. These include transalpine traffic, incipient tourism, and the ever-growing exploration and investigation of the mountains. What unites these topics, which are fascinating in themselves, is the fact that during the period of this study they affected a relatively small number of people, and seem more important from the perspective of the lowlands than from the point of view of the Alpine population. This having been said, I do not wish to insist on a pure and simple internal perspective, since such could distort past reality as much as the traditional external perspective has. A whole series of persons has inspired me and supported my work, and I thank them for this: Dionigi Albera, Werner Bätzing, Heinrich Berger, Jean-François Bergier, Ester Boserup, Jean-Pierre Brun, Christoph Brunner, Pierre Dubuis, Hans-Rudolf Egli, René Favier, Paul Guichonnet, Peter Hersche, André Holenstein, Kurt Klein, Franz Mathis, Jakob Messerli, Darja Mihelic, Claude Motte, Arnold Niederer, Anne Radeff, Guglielmo Scaramellini, David J. Siddle, Ferruccio Vandramini, Pier Paolo Viazzo Preface 3 and, for this English edition, Matt Vester. I am also grateful to the students who have...